Perched in the hills outside Rome sits the Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the centuries-old lakeside summer home for popes, which is also home to the Vatican Observatory, established in 1891 to help bridge the chasm between religion and science.

Castel Gandolfo

The Vatican Observatory, situated at the historic Castel Gandolfo outside Rome, serves as both a symbol and a center for the intersection of science and religion. Established in 1891, the observatory was created to demonstrate the compatibility of faith and scientific inquiry. Today, it continues this mission by hosting a four-week summer school for 25 students from around the world, providing them with unique opportunities to study planetary formation and other astronomical topics.

The observatory is led by Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno and employs a team of astronomers, including those responsible for a significant meteorite collection. Students and staff emphasize that participation is not dependent on religious beliefs, and the program aims to unite people through science. The observatory also serves as a reminder of the historical tensions between the church and science, exemplified by Galileo's experiences, but now stands as a place where faith and reason are seen as complementary pursuits.

Scanning the heavens at the Vatican Observatory

Perched in the hills outside Rome sits Castel Gandolfo. The centuries-old lakeside summer palace for popes. Leo XIV is coming next week but there have been some less predictable summer residents living amid these sprawling Vatican gardens. Astronomy students. In that case you can add as much molecular hydrogen as you want. Among them American Isabella Macias. A graduate student at MIT. She's studying planetary formation and is sartorially on point. I love your earrings. Thank you. It's the solar system. Macias is one of 25 students selected from around the world to attend free of charge this four-week summer school at the Vatican Observatory. What can you do at the Vatican? What can you do here that you can't do at MIT? Okay. The Vatican has such a deep rich history of working with astronomers. It shows that science is not only for just super global superpowers around the world but it's for the students, it's for humanity. This past week they celebrated those new images coming from that telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Incidentally Vera Rubin was a teacher at our first summer school. You can see there's actually two telescopes here. Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno is director. He's one of a dozen astronomers working for the pope. Why does the pope have an astronomer? Well shouldn't every major religion have an astronomer? You know it's a great thing to have. Quite seriously there are a couple of things that motivated Pope Leo XIII to start a Vatican Observatory. This all happened in 1891 and that was the time when the idea first really got into the public consciousness that there might be a war between science and religion. He wanted to show that there was no such war. This was a PR effort at first? It's always been a PR effort. It was useful in the years before the Vatican was recognized as a city-state in 1929 when the observatory took part in a late 1800s effort to photograph the sky. Every national observatory got one piece to photograph. Italy got one piece, the Vatican got a different piece. So the observatory was a symbol of statehood. Today discussing higher powers here can be about just telescopes. Are you religious? I am not a man of faith, no. Polish student Simon Peteniak was surprised to see the Vatican had an observatory. I was not asked about my religious views once in the application and it really goes to show how wonderful science can be at uniting people. Often you see a scientist in a white lab coat, you're in a collar. Yeah and actually I often wear the lab coat over the collar just for fun. Brother Bob Mackey is in charge of the Vatican's collection of roughly 1200 meteorites which he calls solar system time capsules. History of science includes many, many clerics. You don't think of it today because we think of science as a very secular field of study but in fact who in the past had the time and the resources to study? On one outing the students got to meet the new pope, himself a math major at Villanova University. Be generous in sharing what you learn. But another field trip was a reminder of those historical tensions between the church and scientists. Galileo made his money, made his fame. The Galileo Museum in Florence honors the astronomer whose writings in the 1600s about the earth orbiting the sun, not the other way around as the church had seen it, was one issue that got Galileo Galilei into trouble and put on church trial. So often faith and reason are seen to be at odds. The trouble is of course we teach science by getting the answers in the back of the book as if science was a big book of facts. And we teach religion as if it was a big book of rules and a big book what happens if the two books disagree with each other. But that's not science or religion. Brother Guy Consolmagno says there's something inspiring about pondering such big questions in such a beautiful place. But really anyone anywhere can just gaze upward toward the heavens and be awestruck in our eternal celestial search for answers.

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